It's what we say we want: The Oscar case *for* Argo.

Argo (review) is not my favorite film of the year.  It didn't even make my best-of-2012 list.  It had to settle for the Runner-Ups section along with fellow nominee/front-runner Lincoln, a choice that caused no end of consternation from my mother-in-law who considers both to among her favorite films of 2012.  My favorite film of 2012 is Cabin In the Woods, a film that had about as much of a chance of winning Best Picture this year as Kung Fu Panda 2 did last year.  My favorite film among those nominated is Zero Dark Thirty, which went from front-runner to also-ran after Sony made the financial choice to not fight back against the frankly shameful 'this film endorses torture!' arguments until after the film's wide release.  There are a few films that are nominated that I don't care for (Les Miserables, Silver Linings Playbook), but I'd have to say that if we're picking a Best Picture on a the basis of what film most positively represents the year that was 2012, Argo is the best and most logical choice.

Are we laughing *with* Melissa McCarthy or *at* her?

Rex Reed lit a fire under the blogsphere last week when his negative review of Melissa McCarthy's Identity Thief referred to Ms. McCarthy as "cacophonous, tractor-sized" as well as a "female hippo". On one hand, at this point in time, getting pissed at something Rex Reed said is a lot like being outraged that Anne Coulter said something racist or that Armond White panned Toy Story 3 by comparing it unfavorably to Transformers 2. It's just what they do, and being outraged over it just gives them the attention they crave and thrive on. He also made a statement at the end of the review which stated that Ms. McCarthy is "a gimmick comedian who has devoted her short career to being obese and obnoxious". That statement gave me pause, because quite frankly, there may be some kernel of truth to it. Okay, Gilmore Girls fans like myself know that McCarthy has been in the industry for around fifteen years, so "short" is inaccurate right there.  And calling a woman a hippo makes you an asshole and possibly a misogynist.   But the rest of it, the seemingly insulting part about the root of her stardom... he may be indirectly correct.

Weekend Box Office (01/20/13): Chastains's Mama and Zero Dark Thirty top while Walhberg, Crowe, and Schwarzenegger bomb.

This weekend provides a fascinating lesson at the would-be star system and the extent to which it exists in Hollywood today.  Jessica Chastain indeed reigned as the star of the top two movies of the weekend.  Mama (review), which was sold more on executive producer Guillermo Del Toro than anyone in front of the camera, debuted with a terrific $28 million over the Fri-Sun portion of the weekend, with $33 million expected by the end of the four-day Martin Luther King Day weekend (or twice its $15 million budget).  Zero Dark Thirty (everything I've written about that one thus far...) is projected to earn another $21 million by Monday, with $17 million of that coming from its Fri-Sun second weekend, a solid hold of just -28% from last weekend.  The film's ten day total is now $55 million and will be about $59 million tomorrow, or almost identical to what Black Hawk Down had after its first ten days.  It opened on *this* weekend eleven years ago, ironically grossing exactly what Mama made over the four-day holiday and dropping 40% in weekend two for a $17 million second weekend.  Even compared to the usual slate of early year (January/February) supernatural horror, Mama's debut is the strongest yet, besting the $24 million debut of Michael Keaton's White Noise back in January 2005 (that would be about $29 million today).  So does this mean that Jessica Chastain is a new movie star?  Not quite.

Zero Dark Thirty doesn't endorse torture, and neither did 24.

Zero Dark Thirty finally opened wide last weekend, which means that the general movie-going crowd finally got to see what all the fuss was about.  But while I don't want to rehash the various 'No, it doesn't endorse torture!!' arguments that I've made here and elsewhere yet again (review, essay 01, essay 02), I would like to take a moment to address a side issue.  In many of the discussions about Zero Dark Thirty, be it pro or con, we've seen the television show 24 being used as a shorthand for being a mainstream entertainment that did all of the things that Zero Dark Thirty is accused of.  I intended to write something of this nature back when the show left the air in May 2010, but life got in the way.  24 premiered in November of 2001, not directly inspired by the 9/11 attacks but unfortunately in their shadow.  I wrote extensively about that first season when it ended (read it HERE), but looking back, it's clear that the show wasn't intended to be a lightning rod of controversy and/or the go-to talking point when discussing the post 9/11 'war on terror'.  Throughout its eight seasons, 24 was never 'the torture show', nor was it intended to represent one political ideology (or political party) over another.

Weekend Box Office (01/13/13): Zero Dark Thirty tops while Gangster Squad disappoints and Haunted House overperforms.

After nearly a month in limited release, Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty (review) finally went wide this weekend and it grossed $24 million to top the weekend box office. The film now has a $29 million cume.  All eyes were on this one, with the big question being whether critical acclaim and film punditry would translate into mainstream interest.  Obviously the current 'does the movie promote torture?' controversy brought the film all kinds of free publicity, but I'd argue it scared off just as many as it brought it.  By the way, no it doesn't endorse torture because... well just watch the movie again (essay 01/essay 02)!  Anyway, the closest comparison is the Martin Luther King Day Jr. weekend wide-release debut of Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down eleven years ago next weekend, which pulled in $33 million over four days and $28 million over Fri-Sun.  The 'hunt for Bin Laden' film's debut is a bit lower, especially when inflation is accounted for (BHD's 3-day total is around $38 million in 2013 dollars), but the Scott picture was pretty much a nonstop action picture while Bigelow's is an icy and often cold 2.5 hour procedural where even the climactic action sequence is meant to disturb more than excite.  The film played 59% male and 62% over 30. Sony did a great job selling this one somewhat falsely as a triumphant action drama, although they didn't seem to make as much of an effort to bring in females for what is indeed a female-centric character drama (Jessica Chastain is terrific here).  Despite a merely okay  2.6x weekend multiplier, expect pretty strong legs as this becomes the defacto water-cooler Oscar contender (Oscar nomination essay 01/Oscar nomination essay 02), the one everyone has to see in order to participate in the national dialogue.

Why Kathryn Bigelow's Oscar snub is a moral outrage.

For a general discussion of the Oscar nominations, go HERE.

In the broad scheme of things, the only Oscar snub that qualifies as an outrage is the omission of Kathryn Bigelow for Best Director.  Not because it's a bigger slight than snubbing Ben Affleck or Samuel L. Jackson or the like, but because her omission is clearly the result of the kind of smear campaign against the film that has made politics next-to-impossible for the last decade or so.  It's the same kind of baseless campaign that prevented Susan Rice from being nominated for Secretary of State, it's the same mud-slinging that caused Obama to (wrongly) dismiss Van Jones early in his term, thus providing the GOP their first scalp.  And to add insult to injury, Bigelow has been deemed wholly responsible by those who wrongly believe that Zero Dark Thirty endorses torture, leaving screenwriter Mark Boal (who got a nomination) off the hook.  If this kind of stuff happens every time someone tries to make a challenging film for adults, then we can kiss such things goodbye from those who seek award recognition.  If this is a sign of things to come, where Hollywood becomes as frenzied and maddening as politics, then that is a troubling thing indeed.

The year the presumed favorites didn't even get nominated. Thoughts on the 2013 Oscar nominations...

Despite all of the pre-awards chatter and what-not, there were still a few surprises in this morning's Oscar nominations.  The biggest shock, for me anyway, was the inclusion of Christoph Waltz for Best Supporting Actor in Django Unchained and the unfortunate exclusion of Leonardo DiCaprio (who I frankly expected to win) and Samuel L. Jackson (who gave the film's best performance) for same.  Waltz is fine, although it's interesting in that A) he's basically the film's lead character and B) he's playing a riff on the work he did in Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds, but this time on the side of the angels (it's possible that voters simply voted for the most morally righteous white character in a film full of racists, ala Tommy Lee Jones's expected nom for Lincoln).  Django Unchained scored a best picture nomination (one of nine films nominated) but Tarantino was denied a Best Director nod.  The other massive snub was the exclusion of Ben Affleck for Best Director for Argo, despite the film being up for Best Picture and Alan Arkin snagging a Best Supporting Actor nomination.  I honestly can't figure that one out, as pretty much everyone who loved Argo gave Affleck full and complete credit for the film.  It's disheartening in that Affleck has made a real effort to use his star power to direct the kind of mainstream big-studio grown up genre fare that has been neglected over the last decade, and a snub can surely be read as 'Don't bother, just go direct Justice League'.  The Best Director category also provided the other mega-shock this morning, snubbing the proverbial front runner Kathryn Bigelow.  I'd hate to think the stupid 'torture debate' had an effect, but I think the stupid torture debate had an effect.     

Love the sinner, hate the sin: Films I like or love despite finding them morally or ideologically objectionable.

Let's pretend for a moment that Zero Dark Thirty does in fact do all of the things that its critics, many of whom have not even seen the film, are claiming.  Let's pretend that it endorses torture on a practical and/or moral level.  Let's pretend that it implies/states that information gleaned from torture was essential in catching Osama Bin Laden and would not have been discovered any other way.  Does that (incorrect, I'd argue) interpretation automatically negate its worth as quality film making?  There has been much discussion of the alleged morality of Bigelow and Boal's superb procedural, much of it penned by those who believe that either it is 'pro-torture' or at least will be interpreted as much by general moviegoers (a classic case of 'I'm smart enough to understand but they aren't').  The question for those critics becomes whether its alleged sins negates its worth and/or can be separated from its qualities as a film.  But quite frankly, it's more than possible to enjoy a film while disagreeing with its opinions or moral worldview.  In fact, this whole thing started with David Edelstein picking the film as his favorite of 2012 while also calling it morally reprehensible.With that in mind, without endorsing any of the somewhat simplistic ( in my opinion wrongheaded) views of Zero Dark Thirty, I thought this would be a good time to discuss a few films that I happen to like and/or love despite being vehemently opposed to their respective ideologies. Spoilers ahoy!

2012 in Film: My Favorite movies of the year...

We come to it at last, the great list of our time (err... our year).  Anyway, after plenty of foreplay, it's time to actually rattle off my picks for the ten very "best" films of the year.  As always, these are not the 'objective' "best" films of the year, but merely my out-and-out favorites of the last twelve months.  As always, we'll do the first ten films in alphabetical order, with a final summation for my personal pick for the top film of 2012.  Without further ado, onward and downward!

The Avengers (review/spoiler review):
Unlike a number of blockbusters that I've discussed elsewhere, this one actually got better with repeat viewings.  I nitpicked the first time around, found problems here and there during my initial viewing, but still found it to be a relative triumph of blockbuster film-making.  But upon additional viewings, I began to appreciate the coup that Whedon and company pulled off even more.  The minor problems (a clunky first scene, issues with how a major second act plot twist is handled, the lack of a specific lead character, the lack of a definitive climax) began to fade away into the sheer joy that is The Avengers.  The film is well-acted across the board, including a superb starring turn by Mark Ruffalo who makes Bruce Banner into the most interesting character in the group.  The plotting is relatively basic, but the picture is crackling with wonderful dialogue throughout.  The action sequences steadily improve as the film goes on, and the entire escapade has a casual hugeness ("Oh, we've got a giant invisible flying aircraft carrier?  Why not?") that reminded me of Richard Donner's Superman film (moments that would have been the main event for other blockbusters came off as blink-and-you-miss em action beats here).  The character arcs worked better the second time around, the musical score clicked into place, the second-act plot turn worked in the context of the film as opposed to operating as part of a long-running franchise, and a major character's selfless decision felt right.  The sheer excitement of seeing all of these already established heroes (established both in the comics and the prior films) doing battle side-by-side on a truly epic superhero showdown is only topped by how good it all is.  Whether or not it is a great film will no doubt be endlessly debated, but it is surely a great movie, one that I look forward to watching over and over again over the years.

Weekend Box Office (12/30/12): Les Miserables and Django Unchained neck and neck while The Hobbit tops again.

It's frightening sometimes how accurate the math can be.  Before this year, there were only a handful of movies that have opened on a Christmas day that happened to land on a Tuesday over the last decade (Ali and Kate and Leopold in 2001, Alien vs. Predator: Requim, The Great Debaters, and The Waterhorse).  Ali, AvP2, and the Denzel Washington drama The Great Debaters were pretty front loaded ($10m/$34m and $9.5m/$26m, and $3.5m/$13m respectively) while the smaller films (Kate and Leopold and The Waterhorse: Legend of the Deep) had smaller opening Christmas days but longer legs over the six days ($2.5m/$17m and $2.3m/$16.7m).  I use these prior examples because the three major wide releases this weekend pretty much matched up those patterns to a tee.  So when I tell you that Les Miserables opened on Christmas Day to $18 million but did "just" $28 million for the weekend and "only" $66 million for the six-day holiday (a 3.67x weekend multiplier), that doesn't mean anything other than it played like a normal high-profile film that happened to have opened on Tuesday the 25th.  Or that Django Unchained pulled in $64 million off a $15 million Christmas Tuesday opening, that means that it's actually the biggest legs of any would-be blockbuster to open on this specific Tuesday the 25th date (4.2x weekend multiplier).

Weekend Box Office (12/23/12): Hobbit tops, Jack Reacher leads new releases in pre-Christmas pile-up.

 As I have been warning about for months, 10,000 releases all opened in this very weekend, with another 5,000 coming on Tuesday.  Let's just get right into it.  The top film of the weekend was once again The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (review), but it actually took a massive dive from last weekend.  The film earned $36 million, or down 59%.  It's tough to compare this to the previous Lord of the Rings films because they all opened on *this* weekend and had the unbeatable holiday cushion to keep them afloat.  Still, the film has $149 million in ten days, or well below the respective ten-day totals of The Two Towers ($168 million) and Return of the King ($190 million) and very much behind where they were at the end of their second weekends (IE - 12 days as they all opened on Wednesdays - $168 million and $200 million respectively).  It's not bombing, but it's already proving that it's not the box office second-coming ala Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace.  Come what may, just with this year's Spider-Man reboot, what was once the biggest franchise of all is now just another large fish swimming in the blockbuster pond.

How Zero Dark Thirty's unflinching objectivity opens the film up to simplistic accusations of ideological partisanship.

Spoiler warning, I suppose...

There is going to be a lot of debate over the next few months about just where on the political divide Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty happens to sit.  I argued in my review that it merely looks at what happened and what was done without explicitly endorsing or condemning it.  But in our somewhat simplistic media age, impartiality can be seen as being politically partial, depending on what your film happens to contain.  I've written about this before, back when The Green Zone came out (read it HERE).  Just because a film is about evil corporations who kill people doesn't mean it's intended as liberal propaganda and just because a pregnant woman chooses to not have an abortion doesn't mean it's an anti-choice screed.  I'd argue part of the point of Zero Dark Thirty is that non-fiction rarely falls into specific political or ideological dogmas.  At a glance, the film shows brutal torture ordered by Republican President Bush eliciting information that allowed for Democratic President Obama to order a mass killing by US troops in a sovereign country with only a token belief that the people about to be gunned down were the intended targets.  The film dares to neither explicitly condemn the torture nor remotely take joy in the climactic execution, presenting both events as morally reprehensible even if perhaps necessary to the proverbial 'greater good'.  Even if you argue that the film states that torture may well have worked (although the film certainly acknowledges that the carrot works better than the stick) and that we certainly 'got' Bin Laden, it also argues that we damn well should take a moment to inquire at what cost our 'victory' was achieved.

Review: Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty (2012) is a powerful tale of the costs of 'justifiable' violence.

Zero Dark Thirty

2012
150 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty (trailer) is a refreshing 'just the facts' procedural drama that maintains an almost allergic aversion to melodrama.  The film is ice-cold throughout, maintaining an even-keeled approach to the decade-long manhunt for Osama Bin Laden, pausing only occasionally to acknowledge the aftermath of violence.  At a glance, the film is basically the Jessica Chastain show, as she quickly becomes the center of the film and dominates the proceedings even when the focus shifts in the final thirty minutes.  Hers is a dynamite movie star performance, one that is not only Oscar-worthy but will likely win her the statute in a few months time.  The film surrounding her is an intense and often fascinating 'inside' look at both the 'dark side' and the mundane side of the would-be War on Terror.  It's a nasty bit of business, and its matter-of-fact presentation of unsavory details could be read as an implicit endorsement, just as its climactic brutality denies you the catharsis you might be expecting.  It merely exists to tell its story, not tell you how to feel about it.

Preferential Patriotism: The strange "politics" of Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty.

There isn't too much to say about this brief teaser. The title is guaranteed to confuse a good 90% of general moviegoers and I'll be shocked if Sony doesn't add a "The Hunt For Bin Laden" subtitle in there before the film comes out in December.  I may be the only one, but I laughed out loud at Jason Clarke repeatedly screaming "When was the last time you saw Bin Laden!?"  It's the kind of "make sure the dumbest moviegoer sitting in the theater gets what this movie is about" moment that sticks out like a sore thumb.  But what's worth noting more than the actual tease itself is the way the film will surely be judged by differing political factions. Obviously I haven't seen the film, but its pre-release vilification, best personified by Rep Peter King's hearings alleging that the film received classified materials during pre-production, is yet another example of how 9/11 changed the political conversation by basically making everything partisan.